‘The Upper Tribunal considered the extent of a tenant’s liability to pay for communal heating when that obligation arose only by an estoppel by convention and, in fact, the tenant’s flat was no longer connected to the communal system.’

‘The UT comprised of Holgate J and HHJ Hodge QC (also sitting as County Court judges) gave valuable guidance concerning the importance of judges maintaining jurisdictional clarity and seperation when sitting as both FTT judges and County Court judges under the Residential Property Dispute Deployment Pilot.’

‘A not infrequent problem for leaseholders is a landlord who takes a lackadaisical approach to enforcing leasehold covenants, or worse yet allows or waives breaches of covenants by certain leaseholders.’

‘While the Supreme Court’s decision in Birch v Birch [2017] UKSC 53 is ostensibly about the court’s power to vary undertakings, it provides useful broader guidance on the variation of family orders generally.’

‘The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) has given guidance on the approach to be followed by the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) when considering whether there is an estoppel by convention which prevents a leaseholder from denying the payability of a service charge which has not been demanded in accordance with the terms of the lease.’

‘Timothy Taylor Ltd v Mayfair House Corporation & Anor [2016] EWHC 1075 (Ch). It is a commercial property case, but has interesting elements on the way in which building works may be reasonably carried out.’

‘A tribunal has agreed to a property developer’s request to modify a restrictive covenant preventing the use of land for anything other than car parking, even though the developer had already built social housing on the land in breach of that covenant.’

‘In Nemcova v Fairfield Rents Ltd [2016] UKUT 303 (LC), in what has become known as ‘the Airbnb ruling’, the Upper Tribunal gave guidance on the circumstances in which short-term lets might amount to a breach of covenant prohibiting the use of a property for anything other than ‘a private residence’. In this article, Jamal Demachkie (who acted for the successful landlord at first instance and on appeal) provides his analysis of this important decision.’

‘The Upper Tribunal upheld the FTT’s determination that the lessee had breached a covenant in her lease not to use her flat other than as a private residence by granting a series of short-term lettings of the property. The fact that the lessee had granted the lettings meant that her occupation of the flat was so transient and not sufficiently permanent that she would not consider the property her private residence.’

‘Airbnb seems like a wonderful idea. You can rent out your flat whenever convenient without having to become a full-time landlord or hotelier. It’s an easy way to earn a little extra cash with the added bonus of a world-wide network of other people’s spare rooms available for that well-deserved weekend break. Airbnb now has 60m users, 640,000 “hosts”, 2m listings and 500,000 stays per night. It’s big!’

‘The last few years have seen short term property letting sites such as Airbnb become the go-to way of booking holiday accommodation in Europe’s most popular cities. Millennial tourists are rejecting stuffy, expensive hotels, preferring instead the flexibility of their own apartment right in the middle of town where, in the words of Airbnb, they can “feel at home anywhere in the world”. In response, those who are lucky enough to own or occupy a city apartment have been quick to meet the demand, with new “hosts” joining the site every day. There are Airbnb kiosks on London’s high streets where tourists can book a property like they used to book a cab.’

‘Development work that restricts natural sunlight to property can in principle be a breach of a ‘quiet enjoyment’ covenant in a lease, even where no formal right to light exists, according to the county court.’

‘Did you know that a judge of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) may be able to hear a county court case and vice versa? Under a scheme being piloted at present, such a thing is indeed possible.’

‘By their very nature, mixed-use developments involve multiple parties with competing interests. This often leads to disputes regarding the management of the estate and the cost of maintaining it and, ultimately, to leaseholders wanting to take control (either by exercising the right to collective enfranchisement or the right to manage).’

‘The tenant occupied the ground and basement floors of a building from which it operated a gallery. The lease contained terms reserving the landlord’s right to build and a covenant for quiet enjoyment. In order to carry out works on the adjoining upper floors of the building, the landlord erected scaffolding, which enveloped the building, restricting access to the tenant’s gallery and giving the impression that it was closed. The works also caused substantial noise in the tenant’s premises. No financial compensation was offered by the landlord to the tenant for the works undertaken.’

‘Forfeiture of (residential) long leases is a controversial subject: on the one hand, it’s clear that there has to be a practical and accessible route for landlords to enforce covenants, whether as to payment of monies or more general “management” covenants (e.g. stopping people just removing load bearing walls); but, on the other, the potential for an enormous (and almost always disproportionate) benefit to the landlord if the lease actually is forfeited is pretty hard to justify. Moreover, as a result of both the general drafting techniques in long leases and some [ahem] interesting Court of Appeal decisions, there is a pretty good case that a landlord can recover his legal and professional costs of pursuing forfeiture matters, even if the breach is trivial or if relief would be granted.’

Sign up for the daily email

“Current Awareness is the simplest and most reliable way for lawyers to keep up to date with what is going on in the legal world. The Inner Temple Library team never miss an important event or article.”